Shades of Meaning

Our state standards are asking students to be able to know and understand the differences in word meanings. Shades of Meaning is a phrase used to describe the small differences in meaning between similar words and phrases. Understanding the Shades of Meaning helps with concept development of words such as the denotation and connotation.

- Denotation is the dictionary meaning; EX: Woman and lady both refer to a female adult.
- Connotation: feelings an ideas that have become attached to certain words; EX: even though woman and lady both refer to a female adult, lady suggests one who is well-mannered or proper.

 

There are many ways to incorporate Shades of Meaning activities into your daily routine either whole group, small group, or center time.

• Give students a target word and then they must work together to find synonyms (or provide them) and place them in order from weakest to strongest meaning. Students will have to defend why they put their words in a certain order. There is NO right answer.  
• You can also have a set of words made and students can use them in a center to determine the strongest and weakest words.

Below is an example out of paint strips fro the store. You can have students take it a step further and write an example of each word that has personal meaning to them. You will want to encourage the students to have better word choice in their writings.

Authors that Skype

What better way to connect with an author about a book you have just read with your students then to Skype with them. Below is a link from Kate Messner, that has authors that will Skype for a free 15-20 minute session with your students.

 

http://www.katemessner.com/authors-who-skype-with-classes-book-clubs-for-free/

Digging Deeper with Themes

As teachers we often are in a time crunch and in such a hurry to move on to the next objective or book that we don't stop to really think and reflect on a book that we have just read. Rereading and discussing a book before, during, and after reading are essential to digging deeper and really understanding what was read. This may mean that you are reading less books as a class, but the quality of instruction is so much deeper. To help students have a deeper understanding with the theme of a story try the following activity:

• Before reading, try giving students a keyword as to what the theme is.
• During reading students reflect on how the keyword are captured throughout the book by the events that are happening. They will have to reread and take notes in their reading journal or on sticky notes citing evidence. As teachers, this allows you to guide the students thinking as they are reading or listening to a story.
• After reading students are able to define the theme in terms of what it is and brainstorm what it is not by looking back at their journal entries.  This allows students to have meaningful conversations about the book that was read.

Picture of the Day

With Common Core we often ask our students to look closely to site evidence, infer, observe, and draw conclusions from the text they're reading. We can do the same with a Picture of the Day, which will lead to increased reading comprehension. There are many sites and newspapers that have created picture of the day resources available for use. This would be an excellent activity to incorporate into a center rotation or morning work.

Below is a link from Jen at Hello Literacy, she wrote a wonderful post that includes resources about  Picture of the Day.
http://helloliteracy.blogspot.com/2013/08/observing-describing-inferring-with.html

Daily 3 Math and Math Blog

The Sisters use a Daily 3 format for teaching math. The main lesson for each day comes from the district wide curriculum. These lessons are usually too long, so they break the lesson into more manageable chunks to be taught during 3 whole group focus lessons (7-10 minutes). To do this teacher must be mindful of the essential components that are really necessary for students to learn. The Sisters use the following format when teaching math:

• Mini Lesson 1 (I Do) - teacher explanation and modeling
• Mini Lesson 2 (We Do) - guided practice of same concept
• Mini Lesson 3 (You Do) - Students work on a problem for the focus lesson and share there thinking.

After each Mini Lesson, students are working in the following areas (30-40 minutes):

• Math By Myself - additional practice on focus lesson or what they need help on
• Math in Writing - problem solving where they are writing their thinking
• Math with Someone - math game

When students are working this gives the teacher a chance to: assess students, have a small group, or confer with students.

This Blog is a space for all those using and those interested in using Guided Math in k-5 classrooms. It will include pictures from classrooms, short instructional videos of sample lessons, lesson plans, math centers, great websites, podcast and screencasts. Most importantly it provides a space to share resources, to talk and to collaborate with others. Together we know much more than anyone of us can alone.

http://guidedmath.wordpress.com/

 

Dr. Dixon video about Guided Math Groups

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtExID3SDVk

Doing Math with the 8 Math Practices

Common Core Standards have put in place the 8 Math Practices which focus on the “processes and proficiencies” of doing math. Simply put they are ~  what we do when we do math!

Students should be:

• thinking the problem out
• reasoning
• modeling
• talking math with one another

We are trying to get students to develop an understanding of how to do the math. It is no longer enough that students get the correct answer, but more importantly HOW they got it. While reading an article the author stated, "If kids could be successful without having to think or reason, then the lesson is not good enough".

Grade Specific 8 Mathematic Practice Poster Sets:
http://www.citrus.k12.fl.us/edserv/klauderm/CommonCoreMathResources.htm

Math Videos
http://www.insidemathematics.org/index.php/standard-1

Every Student, Every Day

A passionate literacy researcher, Richard Allingtion, shows that the best way to motivate and accelerate reading growth is to have every student, every day do the following:

• read accurately;
• read something they have selected;
• understand what they have read;
• talk to others about their reading and writing;
• write something that is meaningful; and
• listen to a fluent adult read aloud;

Simple, yet how do we fit that into our reading block. Some suggestions that are aligned to Common Core are:

• talk to students about how their work is meaningful to them
• talk to students about their book choices
• listen to students as they talk purposeful

 

Make Your Day More Fulfilling!

With so much going on in our day to day lives is there a way we can do more? William Ward has five thoughts on how each of us can do more. Are you willing to take the challenge and make your day more fulfilling?

 

Do more than belong: participate.
Do more than care: help.
Do more than be fair: be kind.
Do more than forgive: forget.
Do more than dream: work.
~William Arthur Ward

Student Friendly Search Engine

Wanted to share a newer student friendly search engine, SweetSearch: http://www.sweetsearch.com/

With Common Core requiring students to actively search the web for research. SweetSearch is the perfect place for student to start. It searches only the 35,000 websites that the staff of research experts and librarians and teachers have evaluated and approved. They constantly evaluate their search results and "fine-tune" them, by increasing the ranking of websites from organizations such as the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian, PBS, and university websites.

SweetSearch helps students find outstanding information faster. It enables them to determine the most relevant results from a list of credible resources, and makes it easier for them to find primary sources. They exclude not only obvious spam sites, but also marginal sites that read well but lack academic or journalistic rigor. Just as important, the very best websites that are often buried on other search engines appear on the first page of SweetSearch results.

 

 

Audio Books

Hearing a book read on tape helps students see how the words on the page can come alive in a fluid, expressive way. It helps them focus on the sounds of words read without interruption and provides a model of fluent reading. Audio books also give your students an important introduction to listening — a skill that she must master in order to learn to read. Listening to stories also helps develop imagination and attention which is important skill for them to learn. Not to mention it fosters a LOVE of WORDS.  Below are two sites worth checking out.

http://www.memfox.com/mem-reads-aloud#

http://www.storynory.com/

Illustrative Mathematics ~ Website

llustrative Mathematics is a website that will help you implement Common Core State Standards. Click on K-8 Standards and browse by your grade level or peek at standards by domain. Available illustrations will give support to teachers by providing clear activities that meet standard objectives.

http://www.illustrativemathematics.org/

College Bound what a Message

"Your child is college bound, start saving now!" What if we told each parent this at parent conferences. What an amazing message this would be.

With the standards shifting to Common Core students will have the knowledge and skills to be successful for college and careers. Students at all levels K-12 are expected to:

• Become strong readres and writers
• Read large amounts of fiction and nonfiction
• Read books of interest at a high level independently and comprehend what they have read
• Think deeply and respond to text, recognize themes of literature, and determin author's purpose

8 Mathmatical Practices

Common Core Standards brings to us: The 8 Standards for Mathematical Practice that are being using K-5. These practices place an emphasis on student demonstrations of learning…

1. Make sense of problem solving and persevere in solving them

• make meaning and look for starting points to its solution
• analyze what is given and the goal of the problem
• develop a plan
• monitor and evaluate progress and change course if necessary
• check answers to problems and determine if the answers make sense

2. Reason abstractly and quantitatively

• make sense of quantities and their relationship
• represent symbolically (equations and expressions)
• manipulate equations
• understands and uses different properties and operations

3. Construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others

• understand and use definitions previously taught when justifying results
• attempts to prove or disprove answers through examples and counter examples
• communicates and defends their math reasoning using objects, drawings, diagrams, actions, verbal, and written communication

4. Model with mathematics

• can solve everyday problems
• can apply assumptions and approximations to simplify complicated tasks
• use tools such as diagrams, two-way tables, graphs, flowcharts and formulas to simplify tasks
• analyze relationships mathematically to draw conclusions
• can interpret results to determine whether they make sense

5. Use appropriate tools strategically

• can decide which tools will be most helpful (ruler, calculator, protractor)
• can detect possible errors by using estimation and other math knowledge
• can make models that enable visualization of the results and compare predictions with data
• can use technology tools to explore and deepens their understanding of concepts

6. Attend to precision

• can communicate precisely to others
• can use clear definitions in discussions with others
• can state the meaning of symbols consistently and appropriately
• can calculate accurately and efficiently

7. Look for and make use of structure

• can look closely to determine a pattern
• can step back for an overview and shift perspective
• can see complicated things as being composed of single objects or several small objects

8. Look for and express regularity in repeated reasoning

• can identify calculations that repeat
• can look both for general methods and for shortcuts
• can maintain oversight of the process, while attending to the details
• can continually evaluate the reasonableness of results.

Writing Apps

What better way to motivate writers of all ages than with using technology. Below is the link from Education Technology and Mobile Learning that has 10 fabulous apps to help those that love to write to the most reluctant writer.

http://www.educatorstechnology.com/2013/02/10-great-writing-ipad-apps-for-teachers.html

Guided Reading

During one of our professional development days in early January our Title One Teacher conducted a small training on Guided Reading. She showed teacher how to level and what could be done after leveling students. According to Burkins and Yars guided reading should be kept to text that is on the child's higher end of instructional level (around 95% accurate). Students should be doing most of the reading and strategy work in their guided reading groups. Teachers should be providing scaffolding strategies and cues starting with the least supportive before trying the most supportive. Students should have lots and lots of reading success during the guided reading process. If you have to stop a student more than 5 times on one book per 100 words, it's too hard for guiding reading and more on their frustration level.

Guided reading is a time when teachers provide the least amount of support necessary for students to be show what they know for most of the the book but are not 100% independent with word word and focus skills.

When forming guided reading groups you can choose to work with students all on the same level or group according the the focus skill they are lacking. If you choose to group based on focus skills then each student would be using a different level guided reading book or possible their Accelerated Reading book which should be at their instructional level.